Harry Potter and the Boring Hallows

Chapter One: Voldemort schemes and behaves badly while sycophants cower and fawn. WTF do these people see in him?

Chapter Two: Harry reads the newspaper, and I fall asleep.

So tell me, does it pick up? Or should I just turn my attention to the next book in my To Read pile?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Just when I was on a roll with the whole productivity thing - I came home from work tonight and pretty much just fell asleep for a few hours. I woke up at 9:30 or so, and was too sleep-addled to do any work. I just made muffins, and watched some TV. I guess everyone needs a night off - I just hate feeling like I wasted so much time.

Gotta start getting more sleep.

Dumbledore's Zombie Kills Harry Potter!

Yeah, ok, maybe not so much with the truthiness; I haven't actually started reading it. My prediction: it will be bloated and crappy in a lot of ways, but probably a decent story; Harry lives and will make babies with Ginny; Snape dies; blah blah whatever. I'll start reading soon.

Something that's more on my mind, though, is the process of Getting my Shit Together. I (like everyone) have a lot of Stuff to do: work, domestic stuff, creative stuff, magazine stuff, and so on - just overwhelming piles of Stuff. For the past few months, I've been methodically working on getting it all together. I've been reading a lot of productivity books and blogs, experimenting with systems, and it's slowly starting to come together. It seems like I can only focus on one area at a time: if I'm focused on deep-cleaning the house, for example, I can't really concentrate on writing a novel.

But the good thing is that once an area gets to a certain level of togetherness, it seems to almost maintain itself. Once I get the house in good shape, for example, it only takes a few minutes a day to keep it clean; once my slush pile is under control, it only takes half an hour or so to deal with the newest slush.

It takes a lot of work to get to that point, and I still have a lot of work to do to get everything together. But it's worth it.

Currently I'm using Remember the Milk to keep track of my Lists; it's great, and free. The most useful feature to me, right now, is that I can save a search that looks across all my lists, and pulls out the ones that meet particular criteria - like everything due today. So I can manipulate the due dates and priorities and so on until I get one short clear list of the essential things I need to do, instead of being overwhelmed by lists of hundreds of things. So if you're looking for a web-based to-do list, check it out. I'm a big fan.

Feel free to speak up in the comments. What works for you, in terms of productivity? What challenges are you facing?

We Conquer Ikea

It was approximately eleventy-billion degrees in the house today, so we headed out for the air-conditioned wonders of Ikea.

Now, I've never been to an Ikea before. I've never lived in a city that had one - and when I was visiting other cities, I always had far more interesting things to do. I was expecting a massive sprawling store (check), filled with smallish inexpensive furniture (check). I was also expecting huge crowds, total overload, and to walk out of there with fifteen things besides the coffee table we went looking for.

But I guess we lucked out. It wasn't crowded or too overwhelming. I did manage to drop a coffee table on my foot (why, yes, the same one I sprained a while ago, how did you know?), and my new shoes were not the most comfortable - but I can't say either of those things was Ikea's fault. So we tracked our coffee table to its lair, hoisted it to the register, and escaped. The only extra thing we got was $2.00 worth of oven mitts.

We put the coffee table together a little while ago; it wasn't even missing any pieces!

Life is working out pretty well these days, all in all.

Apex Online Interview

Jason Sizemore just posted an interview with me in the latest Apex Online. Check it out!

The Battle of Fort Abbamondi

Upon the advice of several faithful blog readers, I asked Sean to fetch me pillows for a fort, chocolate (cake), wine (in lieu of laudanum), a plant, and some fine reading material. We constructed a fantastic fort, guarded it with a garden gnome, and I settled in to recover.

Suddenly, the fort was attacked! The valiant garden gnome was the first casualty.



After a brief but bloody battle, I was vanquished, and the conquerer set up a writer's workshop in the fort:

Battlefield theatrics aside, my ankle is recovering nicely, and Sean is being very very solicitous.

Happy 4th, y'all.

Owww!

I just sprained the fuck out of my left ankle. Just an innocent walk around the block with Sean and the dog, and somehow I tripped and fell badly - very badly. It was bad enough that Sean went and fetched the car so I wouldn't have to hobble a block home. And now I am setted in on the couch, foot elevated on a stack of pillows, with my laptop. Sean is being perfectly solicitous and fetching things for me, because he is super-awesome.

So, what else should I have him fetch, while he's in a fetching mood? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Apricots

There's a big old apricot tree in the back yard, and this year it has a fair amount of fruit, some of which we can even reach.

Next step: jam.

Bad Joke: A Selkie Story

In my last post, I challenged y'all to write a nun-selkie crossover story. Faithful reader Skipper Rocket took up the challenge, though apparently she can't tell her nuns from her gnomes. Let the International Selkie Month festivities continue! And maybe y'all will see what I mean about gnomes....



BAD JOKE

by Skipper Rocket



A selkie and a gnome walk into a bar within minutes of each other. It’s a warm night. A horse is behind the bar, wiping off the countertop with a bar rag.

SELKIE: (wipes perspiration from her face with a kerchief) A Cosmo, please.

HORSE: Certainly, Miss.


GNOME: Excuse me, gorgeous, but that’s not my beard you’re steppin’ on. Hehehe.


The selkie moves her foot disdainfully.


SELKIE: It is too your beard. Ew, ew, ew, gnome germs!


The gnome follows, caresses the selkie’s calf, which is the highest he can reach.


GNOME: I bet you work out.


SELKIE: Would someone get this creep away from me?


The horse trots around the bar and comes to the selkie’s side. He’s got beer on his breath, and hay in his teeth, but the selkie does a double take on his nether regions. At second glance that’s not a fifth leg at all …

SELKIE: Well, hellooo.


HORSE: Is this …


He looks down, way down.


HORSE: … guy bugging you, miss?


SELKIE: (pouting) Why yes he is. Just look!


She points at her calf.


SELKIE: Gnome germies. And I left my Nair at home.


The gnome kisses the selkie’s ankle, and coos at it.


HORSE: That’s okay, Miss. I’ll take care of you.


The selkie bats her lashes meaningfully.


SELKIE: Oh, I hope so.


The sound of ceramic crunching underhoof (yes, I said it, so sue me) is barely audible above the jukebox, which plays only television theme songs. The Family Ties theme currently plays.


GNOME: (muffled) I’m Norm, the Ravelocity Gnome, and you can’t do this to meeeeeeeeeee!


The little red cap floats atop a small expanding pool of blood. (It’s stinky blood.) The Selkie mounts the horse and hugs onto his neck.


HORSE: (under his breath) Oh yeah, chicks looove horseback rides.


Fin





About the Author:
Skipper Rocket lives in Salt Lake City, UT, and recently gave me a statue of a gnome humping a mushroom.

--

And if you'd like to be part of the International Selkie Month festivities, just send me e-mail.

International Selkie Month?

Sure seems like Shimmer's getting a lot of selkie stories lately. What's up with that? I read three just this afternoon, and I spotted a few others in our slush pile (they were assigned to other editors). Getting that many stories of one type makes it tougher for any of them to succeed with us - even the most genius selkie story tends to seem tired when it's the fifth one you've read in a few days. I'm not saying I'm anti-selkie - just a little weary.

And even if I were anti-selkie, that wouldn't mean much. I was and remain firmly anti-gnome - yet we published Michael Livingston's "Gnome Season" in Issue 4 (this would be a fine time to buy an electronic copy of that issue, don't you think?).

So is there a moral here? I guess so, but it's a weak and slippery one. Don't submit stories that are similar to dozens of other stories in the editor's pile. How are you supposed to know what's in the editor's pile? You can't. You can, though, read widely in the field and get a sense of what's been done already, and what's fresh ground. How are you supposed to know what an editor's getting tired of? You can't, beyond the standard lists of What's Tired (for example, Strange Horizons has a fine list) and the occasional editorial blog post.

But what makes this such a treacherous moral is that there are always exceptions - even vehemently anti-gnome editors run gnome stories once in a while. It happens.

So I'll let you all draw your own conclusions about what to do with your selkie stories.

Mostly, I'm curious about why there are so many selkie stories in my slush pile right now. Was there a selkie anthology that recently closed to submissions? Did the Association for Selkie Pride start a grassroots campaign to raise awareness for selkie-Americans? Or is it just one of those random things, like the month back in the fall of 2005 when I kept getting nun stories?

Now all I need is a selkie-nun crossover story. C'mon, who's game?

A little haircut...

Yesterday we went to my young friend Allie's 13th birthday party. To commemorate the occasion, Wendy and I cut off our hair and sent it to Locks of Love. They make wigs for kids who need 'em - a worthy cause.

Plus, it was time to cut my hair anyway. I had a lot:

Sean graciously agreed to whack it all off for me. It took a while, but eventually he triumphed:

Here's a picture after a little more work on evening it out:

Wendy went a little further with her haircut than I did:

I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Happy birthday, Allie!

Trip's End

Tonight's my last night in Florida.

It's been a pretty good trip. The class has been good - I must confess that I still love the SAPI voices, esp. the one with the British accent - it just makes everything sound so smart. I also, because I am secretly a 13-year-old boy, enjoy fiddling with the vocabulary, and making it play sounds instead of speaking particular words. For example, I might decide to have it read all my slush out loud to me while I learn needlepoint or something (ahaha, just kidding), and have it replace the abominable word "alright" with the sound of a rabbit screaming, which is pretty much how I hear it anyway.

I have to say, this trip has been a lot more pleasant because of Google Maps. I've used them to find hotels and bookstores and grocery stores near my hotel, and get directions. I'm not sure what I would have done pre-Google - well, I guess I would have just asked the front desk or other people in my class - but Google makes it all so easy. Yay, Google!

I finished the Kiernan book, and started in on Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, but I am afraid I am not nearly smart enough to read that. That left me with only 1 fiction book for the whole rest of the week and the trip home, so I went out hunting books. I ended up with Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," Triptree's "Brightness Falls From the Air," John Connolly's "Bad Men," and James Lee Burke's "Last Car to Elysian Fields." A goodly number of pages, and a goodly variety; I should make it home without having to read the SkyMall catalogue. Yay!

Pho in Florida

The first day of class went pretty well. Mostly we covered familiar ground. The new thing I learned was about the SAPI voices this software can use - they sound really great. They're more resource-intensive and not very good for things like quickly hopping through a bunch of menus - but they're really impressive. So if you are a JAWS user, check out the SAPI voices!

After class and a nap, I headed out into the swampy air to find dinner. I navigated to a pho shop, and had a yummy dinner. My book today is Caitlin Kiernan's "Threshold," which I'm liking a lot (though I'm about ready to get to the main action - lots of setup so far, it seems). The waiter noticed I was reading it, and told me his sister's been bugging him to read it. Too bad he hasn't started it yet, or we could have compared notes.

Oh, Florida

Today I flew to Florida for work - I'll be taking a week-long training class about some assistive technology that makes it possible for blind users to work with our software.

The trip went about as well as can be expected. It was lovely to get some time to just read - I plowed through Joe Hill's "Heart-Shaped Box" and "The Demon and the City," by Liz Williams. They're both very enjoyable, and you should run out and read them right now, if you haven't already. It sucked that I finished them both with an hour left of plane trip, and nothing left to read but the Sky Mall catalog, but hey! the reading I did do was great. I'll be sure to pack 3 or 4 books for the return trip.

I'm not enjoying the weather here too much - it feels grossly hot and humid, though I'm told it's only 81 degrees, and 82% humidity. I know it can be much worse. But now I know why Sean was so eager to get the hell out of Florida and move in with me...

Yarr!

It was a long and annoying day at work, so I decided to set everything else aside and declared this bacon cheeseburger and a movie night. Yum.

We went to see Pirates III, which I thought was lovely and a great deal of fun. I really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow, back to work.

A Collection of Shimmer reviews

Tangent Online says, "The Winter 2007 issue of Shimmer, edited by by Beth Wodzinski, is full of magic, love, poetic prose, and again, magic. Not the kind of magic you expect in traditional fantasy stories—spells and bewitchment—but the kind of magic that pulses through the veins of a well drafted collection to enchant the heart. You will remember these stories long after you have tucked the small paperback among your other collectibles." Thanks, Donna!

Sam Tomaino at SFRevu says, "The Winter 2007 issue of Shimmer is another good one. I thought all the stories were Very Good."

And check out what Lois Tilton at IROSF (free registration required) has to say; she gives Tom Cofferwillow Comes Undone, by Stephen Moss, a "Recommended."

Thanks for the reviews!

Yay for the new furnace!

It's 41 degrees and rainy in SLC today - luckily, the new furnace is all hooked up, and it's doing a lovely job of keeping us warm. I'm amazed at how much quieter the new furnace is than the old one.

The electrical work is proceeding. The outlets have been replaced everywhere, and there are new outlets in the office - time to get busy putting that room back together.

I spent a long time on the phone with T-Mobile last night, trying to resolve a relatively minor problem. No luck. Finally, I said, "Fine, I'll just find another phone company," and hung up. A few moments later, I realized, no, I hate phones, I'll just go back to not having one at all. Thank you, T-Mobile, for helping me make my life a tiny bit simpler.

Life is good.

Houses Know More....

Q: What did the electrician say when he was poking around in the attic?

1. Oh my god! I just found $50,000 in a suitcase over here!
2. This job is so much fun I've decided not to charge you anything for it.
3. See these beams that hold up the roof? They're gonna need to be replaced before winter.

One cool thing about the attic is that you can see the old lines from when this place had gaslights, and the chimneys from the bricked-up fireplaces.

I wonder what they'll find tomorrow?

All I Wanted Was an Outlet. . .

This is my house. It's very cute, and very old (built in 1882).

The wiring is particularly ancient; I still have some knob and tube wiring in service, and the outlets all suck.

No problem, I thought. I'll just replace the outlets in the office, the ones where if you brush up against anything plugged into them, they come unplugged, especially the computer power cord (oops).

Anyone who owns an old house knows where this story is going.

So I started looking into outlets, and realized I needed to ground the outlets. And that lead to the realization that I'd need to replace the circuit panel. And while I was at it, it would probably just be easier to rewire the rest of the house, and put in a few more outlets in the office, and put the furnace on its own circuit, and so on. We called electricians and got bids and were prepared to spend eleventy-billion dollars on our modest home improvement project.

Then the furnace died.

This was not exactly a surprise, just as it was not a surprise that my ancient wiring needed to be replaced. The furnace is probably at least 50 years old, and hideously inefficient. It was really time for a new furnace anyway.

The asbestos on the ducts, also not a surprise. But it sure does add to the bill.

Old houses, I think, know when you have the checkbook out. Today, while the asbestos guys were in the basement doing their thing, we noticed a fairly significant leak in the plumbing. I swear it wasn't there two days ago.

Houses just know.

On the plus side, Sean's been really helpful with this whole process. He's spent a lot of time on the phone gathering bids and coordinating schedules, and he's staying home and dealing with the legion of workers. It's just very nice to have someone to help with all this stuff.

And a little thing that made me happy: I got a review copy of John Scalzi's The Last Colony in the mail today. I enjoyed The Ghost Brigades a lot, and am looking forward to reading Scalzi's latest.

It's Done!

The Great Declutter Project of 2007 is officially DONE. Tonight I cleaned out the last closet. The recycling and garbage bins are fairly full, and the car has lots of things for the thrift store.

I think the house is cleaner and less cluttered now than it was when I moved in. It feels great.

Of course, there's still more to do. I didn't include the laundry room or the basement in this project, and I wasn't particularly rigorous in deciding what to throw out, and I didn't even touch the files (do I really need bank statements from 1991? No, I do not. But that is a project for another day.) but damn, it feels really good to have things in such good order.

The next project is to finish deep cleaning the non-closet areas of the house - washing curtains and windows, scrubbing the woodwork, cleaning the floors, all that good stuff. I already did an amazing job on the kitchen, but there's plenty left to do. And then it is time for some rewiring. And after that, dozens of other projects - it never ends.

So why am I on a cleaning and home repair binge? Well, it's always good to keep your house from looking like a crazy person lives there. But the reason I'm doing it right now, of all times, is because my super-nice boyfriend Sean is moving in next week. We are so cute I could just hurl - but it's very, very good.